Chicote
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Posts posted by Chicote
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yawn, nice tank pics
how about a pic of the new mission editor, or is'nt it worth showing, ready, working ???
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helo, yawn
Now if it fixed or even improved the fps, AI, mission editor etc issues in the current game then that would be interesting. Nothing from ED on this and only teaser feedback from testers who I know are restricted in what they can say. Seems like EDs running on faith (again) rather than good business practices.
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Anyone else notice that if you lose an engine in the su33, probably same for all others, that your AI wingmen turn off theirs in sympathy. Greater love hath no wingman than to turn off his engine for his buddy.....sheesh !
Would love to know who drew up the spec for AI behaviour because that guy has a real sense of humour.
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Nope...false, Chicote. I'd say ED is doing quite well in giving its customers something that they are under no obligation to provide. Judging from posts? I'll tell you about an axiom that exists in the aviation service world. If you do what is expected of you, how many people does your customer tell about you? None. If you go above and beyond, and REALLY go out of your way to please him, how many people does he tell? He tells 1 person. If you fall short of expectations, even in the least, how many people does he tell? He tells 50 people. Unfortunately, negatives always get more exposure than positives...its human nature. ;)
Respect your opinion Iguana and I understand this axiom very well. However if your customers keep coming back to you with the same problem then you need to fix it rather than band aid it. ED's re-issue of serial numbers is a band aid for an incredibly badly thought out protection system. If ED spent less of its meagre resources dealing with starforce issues then maybe BS would be just a little further along. Can only see this problem getting worse as people go through their normal computer upgrade cycles and realise the cash they paid for the game does'nt entitle them to put it on their latest system, which ironically may be the one that allows them to play the game at full spec.
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starforce protection has ben a complete joke from day 1 and now appears to be have poor support by ED which was always one of the major concerns of downloading the patch. Glad I waited for the CD and hope ED dump starforce for BS. From the posts above looks like the activation key delivery schedule is much like EDs BS delivery schedule 2 wks +....+....+
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Hmmmm
Thinking about it maybe ubisoft is getting bad rap. Agreed they forced the release of LOMAC well before it was ready but ED were way behind schedule and ubi had to make some money out of this puppy or abandon it. To their credit they got the product released and have supported the LOMAC forum over at the ubi site long after they could be making any money. Can't see how some folk's continually defend ED's release of buggy patches and game updates as a business necessity but still slam ubi for the same reasons. Are we still waiting for BS. ?
Just a thought...
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.."You catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar." :) Wedge has the right idea. You might be pissed off at ED, but just put on your poker face and play politician. You'll get a lot more accomplished that way.
Sad that you've got to go through these hoops to use a product you've already paid for. Starforce implementation in LOMAC has been a farce from the beginning. Hopefully ED will be sick of the ongoing requests for Starforce support from its customers and get it sorted for BS. Can't believe they really want to keep resource allocated to support this.
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Trains pretty much gone for Lockon, not enough gameplay or potential for community addons to keep the interest going until ED release the next sim. Suspect this is mostly down to poor S/W architecture which only allowed ED to change things and even then with difficulty, hence slow and buggy patches/addons. A pity because it had a lot of promise.
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This threads now at 10+ pages. It's nice to talk through the merits of a good DC but the reality is that ED have'nt even looked at a patch for one in either LOMAC or Flamming Cliffs, their unlikely to do anything for BS and the next sim will probably be equally deficient whenever that arrives +2 yrs?. If we are to ask ED to do anything then lets be realistic and ask for minor tweaks to the ME to at least introduce any kind of random element that takes us away from the sterile and repetitive game play we currently have. This is'nt a rant just an observation of where we are and whats realistic to ask for.
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05.26.2003 ..... http://www.lo-mac.com/faq.php
"Will there be a dynamic campaign in Lock On?
Eagle Dynamics is creating a campaign system for Lock On. Details will be provided as it nears completion."
Give them a break guys its only been 3 1/2 yrs. Maybe once they get the LOMAC ME up to at least Flanker 1.0 standard. Don't hold your breath tho.
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Hmmmmmm, mission editors still garbage, flight models on non AFM aircraft are suspect, AI are still braindead and we now ask for a feature to allow us to take out seaguls. Gotta love a good priority list....
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Simplest one of all, even the ability to assign a probability of any object
appearing during a mission would help make missions more interesting.
ME's been one of the most dissapointing aspects of LOMAC since even the
flanker ME was better in every respect. Can't see ED changing things now tho' since there's been no interest from them in the ME since day 1.
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To be honest have'nt seen that many requests for updates compared to prev patch releases. Does'nt seem to be the same level of interset for a helo. If ED wants to drum up some enthusiasm maybe letting some details of what non-helo related features are likely.
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The database has been designed to perform only with the next generation CPU's and graphics cards. To get the best performance out of it using current h/w you need to turn down resolution by using big letters only. This may also help your fps sorry wps typing speed.... ;-).
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747 (Sinclair Spectrum) Flight model was up, down, left and right. Not much more you could
ask for.
Aviator (BBC Micro) Spitfire v's alien invader. As far as I remember Spitfire was fitted with
lasers..... go figure.
Flanker 1.0 to 2.5 (PC) Anybody remember the videocard specific game patches.
IL2 FB/Aces (PC) Great game, well put together.
F4/AF (PC) Plays on a laptop so good for travelling.
LOMAC (PC) Most played sim for me, and most frustrating.
FC to 1.12a (PC) Still potential to be best sim ever if its ever finished.
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Since this threads pretty much run its course now any chance of ED or anyone who can get in touch with ED, since their again notable for their absence here, let us know if theres any LOMAC fixes in BS which will justify non-helo fans buying it. Getting tired of helo and vehicle pics.
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I am quite serious. When you move on, and you don't have a dedicated team for SUPPORTING a project, you stop supporting that project. It's that's simple.
It doesn't matter wether I -wish- that the bugs were all fixed, they won't be, because there's no time to dedicate to them.
Agree, LOMAC's dead. BS is I assume pretty much a helo with no/minor attention to existing LOMAC issues. Time to move on and hope ED take note of the requests/hopes we had for LOMAC and hope they incorporate them in the next SIM whenever that is. To quote the NYPD "Move on nothing to see here...."
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This has been a really good thread so far with people providing detailed lists of what they think are the problems with the game (without shouting I want a Harrier, I want an xx and I want it now) and providing reasons for what their asking for. Don't believe anybody think's the issues are going to be fixed for LOMAC or even BS but at least this is feedback to ED on what the community are looking for in the next product. I hope someones taking this info to them since from a marketing perspective its gold dust. Lets avoid finger pointing on what has gone before that we can't change. ED's done their best under difficult circumstances through the birth of LOMAC to where we are now. Their not perfect so all we can do is provide honest feedback for future work and hope for the best. From the previous messages I believe the key areas people are highlighting are.
1. AI, need to improve AI behaviour for aircraft both on the ground and in the air. Too many occurances of AI traffic jams on runways and poor attack/defensive strategies in the air particularly around AtoG and SEAD tasks.
2. COMM's, better comm's implementation to improve situational awarness as the mission progresses ie updates from wingmen or updates from ground controllers detailing status of other wings and if they have hit targets. Primarily to improve single player immersion.
3. Mission ED, probably one of the bigger concerns. Should be looking to implement : scripting of AI to allow them to react to mission events; improved editor to allow us to see placement of real models on real terrain, Flanker did this well; ability to assign probabilities of units appearing within a mission to reduce current repetitive game play in single missions.
4. Dynamic campaign, this ones a mile wide and everyone has their own thoughts on what a dynamic campagn is so I wont try to tie this down too much other than say we should start with a broad mission objective (ie prevent AI ground troops entering area), a limited set of resources which with the exception of destroyed/damaged units carry over from one phase to another, AI with ability to pursue their objective and finally a turn based game play to allow player/AI to progress through the campaign. Players would define new missions at each phase determined by "intel feedback after prev phase. Woops not going to tie this down any further .... ;-)
5. FPS, need further work on FPS to allow good performance on todays systems, exception performance on +1 yrs. Need to avoid FPS killers ie planes/objects with widely different polygon counts varying FPS dramatically depending on who happens to be in the area, consistancy across models would be good. Ability for engine to cope with built up areas, if Sevastavol kills FPS we don't fly there so why have it in the game...?.
6. Flight models, ED's spoiled us with the Su25T and I guess they will do the same with the KA50. Would be good to see consistent flight models in future products flyables (non-flyables?).
7. Debrief, ok personal one here. Best addon in months has been the Tacview ACMI which has now replaced the original LOMAC debrief for me. A similar feature in future games would be good to help experienced/new pilots figure out where we're going wrong.
Apologies for long entry here and if I've missed anyones pet issue but thought it was important to capture this before we eventually head down the "fanboy v's whiner" path these threads usually end up in.
Cheers
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Thank's Weasel spot on.
Current method of placing object is terrible. The developers have taken the choice of making us do the iterative work of moving back and forward from editor to running the mission just to get the postioning correct rather than provide the tools to do it from the editor as we had prev in Flanker. This adds to the clunky feeling throughout LOMAC where it feels as if ME, game screen navigation etc was thrown together at the last minute rather than as a completed product. What I suspect happened (guess) is that ED had probably progressed some way towards a better dynamic campagn/mission editor but were caught by release schedules so rather than release a buggy editor they chopped it and released the minimum they could. I've done it myself many times in software projects so this is not getting at ED. The frustration here is they never went back and fixed it. Scripting, probability of units appearing etc are basic tools that should have been included. These would pretty much have cleared up most of the sterile environment issues we have.
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What specific problems do you see with the mission editor?
Is it the ME itself or the lack of features? (e.g. triggers, scripting etc, perhaps more like OFP's mission features)
The latter isn't an ME deficiency, it's a deficiency in the game engine. You can't have triggers in the ME if the game engine doesn't support them. The ME is a GUI for creating content for the game engine, nothing more.
Please indicate which one you mean.
btw, check this post regarding IL-2's FMB
ME and lack of features is the honest answer. The ME has been implemented with virtually no features other than place N units at X,Y at time T, fly to point X1, Y1 and thats it. You can't even see where X,Y is since you can only see icon placement and so have to start the game up to find out where you placed them which is ridiculous. Even Flanker would allow you to look at real models acuurately positioned on a detailed map during editing. Regarding scripting triggers etc as a user not really concerned with why the game was designed to make scripting impossible just concerned with lack of foresight that allowed it to occur since its reasonable to expect customers to ask for it. At a minimum and I don't think this should be impossible it would be good if the editor had a feature to say if a unit was declared in the game you could assign a %age probability of it appearing in the mission. At least this would help the single player guys design some variation into missions. Not sure if it was another SIM but Flanker may have had that as well.
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"You think that it won't deliver anything? What, are you nuts? What do you think they're doing all this time? What do you think we're testing? "
Guess we expect BS to deliver a Helo since fixing anything else in LOMAC ie mission editor, AI is "working on old code" and won't get done. So if you're not interested on Helo's not much more to expect from BS. Hence we wait for the next SIM. Unless anyone wants to let us know if there's anything else in BS to keep fixed wing fans engaged. This is'nt underestimating or not appreciating the work ED and the testers are doing on BS but the helo's not where I guess most of us see the problems.
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Would'nt advise going inside the PSU unless you really know what your doing.
Most PSU's are squeezed into an extremely tight box and can be difficult to
put back together once you remove fabs etc. Note all PSU's are safety tested after their assembled so you invalidate this testing if you strip them down.
Just want to make sure you avoid an unwanted frizzy hair do..... ;-)
If anythings fried inside you'll beable to smell it from outside the case.
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Its quite amusing reading some of these posts. Threads like these are worth saving on your hard drive for prosperity and a dern good giggle a a few years down the track.
The pioneering features that ED are integrating into this little chopper are going to raise the bar for all future Addons to a level of reality never imagined.
LOMAC was going to raise the bar on what was achieved with Flanker to levels never imagined and its still not there. Maybe we need some better info on whats planned before we hype up this sim again. Losing faith in ED's ability to deliver since BS is not of interest if there's no LOMAC improvements and the next flight SIM's still somewhere over the horizon (well beyond BVR).
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LOMAC will be dead with BS, though in name only.
I agree that things should have been improved in many areas after Flanker, and I honestly don't know what happened with LO and why it did happen ...
To be clear, the Ka-50 project is doing more than giving you a helo: The underlying code which allows the functions that you have seen demonstrated in the videos - the startup, the ABRIS, etc - this is a /basis/ and it is taking this long because this is all being developped from /scratch/.
All of this code will be used for future aircraft - the reason why they are not tweaking the existing flyables is that they do not want to spend time on all code. It is my impression that ED would prefer to eventually just port everything to the new system they have developed.
And since it is still being worked on, there isn't even -time- to tweak existing aircraft a whole lot.
I wish they did, really! I'd LOVE to see an IFF cue on my F-15C, I'd LOVE to see the notch tightened and the TWS to follow a bugged target properly, I'd LOVE to see the MPCD display all twenty-some pages, and I'd sure love to see my 120 have an extended NEZ.
And so on and so forth - yes, I'm an F-15 guy, so I'll talk about F_15's, but I'll happily extend my comments to the other aircrafts.
As it stands, this isn't going to happen - not right now. But this stuff /is/ scheduled to be worked on. There will be higher fidelity still, moreso than BS, with Tank Killers in terms of ground-pounding.
There will be much more fidelity for AA in the Fighter's project, meaning a rewriting of the radar systems, ECM, and who-knows-what-else.
Now, in light of the mess that LO 1.0 was (and who can deny that it was?) I can understand the pessimism - I really can ...
However ... I would ask for people to look a bit 'below the hood' where BS is concerned, and please, wait and see - you will see that ED is working hard on a lot of improvements.
And hey, at worst, I'll turn out to be a liar ... which will suck, but such is life.
Good mail GG and a good summary of where we are. Would be better if ED could give out some info on their future roadmap. I suspect that like most of us here I've had probably just as much fun applying community fixes to get LOMAC running as well as it does but with LOMAC's limitations we're pretty much hitting a brick wall since we can't affect AI, mission editor behaviour. Just want to have some feedback that ED can work these areas at least in the next SIM if not BS.
Black Shark Update, 16 September 2007
in Lock On: Flaming Cliffs 1 & 2
Posted
So its night night and we all meet back up again in Nov..... ;-)
Night night